Biman cautions party ranks

The CPI(M) has failed to douse class consciousness within a section of its ranks and steer it towards people’s movement, Biman Bose, state secretary of CPI(M), has admitted in a recent document being circulated by the party.

“The duty of a mass organisation is not just to hold one or two committee meetings and recruit new members. It is the leadership’s responsibility to lead the members into working class movement. It is unfortunate that even after all these years we have failed to introduce the required idealistic change among members. The party has failed to steer a section of members to emerge as warriors of the working class,” Bose has said in the article, which analyses the Maoist movement and unrest in Bengal’s tribal belts at length.

Significantly, about six months before his death, former CPI(M) state secretary Anil Biswas had prepared a detailed report on decadence in the organisation and warned the leadership of a severe crisis. But a tremendous victory in 2006 Assembly polls apparently made the leadership too complacent to take action on his report.

Till recently, Bose, Biswas’ successor, had never made such scathing remarks in documents. CPI(M) leaders feel the rectification process and the imminent civic polls, which are nothing short of a precursor to the Assembly elections of 2011, has forced the state secretary to lash out.

“A section within the party has failed to realise why we are not in power at the Centre though we have ruled Bengal for 33 years. Now, it has become all the more necessary to follow the eight conditions while inducting new members. The party cannot ignore this process at any level and under any circumstance. Unless ill or rendered incapable by age, every members has to work for the party,” Bose has said.

The state secretary has expressed noticeable concern over raising of funds. “We are aware that the party needs funds to perform. But members should be stopped from approaching rich businessmen, corporate houses and ‘undesirable elements’ for money. Money should be raised directly from the masses, though drives in every neighbourhood,” said Bose.

Earlier, the Left Front chairman had said that rectification in the CPI(M) would begin from the top and his Politburo colleague, Prakash Karat, had said that the party’s “glorious history” in West Bengal had been tarnished by the greed for power and money of some.

Attributed the decline in the party’s fortunes in Bengal to “bourgeois influence on living standards, Karat had criticised the deviation of Marxists from simple living.

Bose’s article has been published alongside pieces on political crisis written by Karat and Sitaram Yechury. The transcript of a 1964 speech by Jyoti Basu has also been reprinted.